A/N: To all of those who correctly thought Albus wasn't getting out of the Yule Ball, you ought to be amused by this chapter. Sorry it took so long. I'm going to try and have the next chapter up within a week or two, but as I'm going to be moving (I don't know where yet! Eek!), chapters may stagnate for a bit…more…for a little while.

Disclaimer: My kingdom for an interesting disclaimer! Well, maybe not my kingdom, but at least a kudos and a mad props. Also: it's not mine. Please don't sue. Still penniless.

Chapter Seven: Bad News

Much later, after classes had commenced for the day, freeing students to meander out into the cold December day for snowball fights, or to roister around fires in common rooms, Albus found his way to the library and collapsed gratefully into his usual chair. Rose, being her mother's daughter, had claimed their group a table in the first week of school. Being her father's daughter as well, she'd picked a table out of Madam Pince's line of sight, one that still had old, beaten cushions on the chairs that were actually surprisingly comfortable. And she'd pointed to the table, where thousands of students over hundreds of years had left their mark. Right above the floor, in small letters, was Uncle Ron's name, scratched in with the tip of his wand on the farthest table leg from the door. Harry Potter's name was scribed next to it, squished in, but Aunt Hermione's name was unsurprisingly absent. Of course she wouldn't defile something in the library.

Rose and Evan had gone down to watch the Gryffindor Quidditch team practice. Normally, Albus might have joined them, but he wanted a few moments alone to think. And to try and solve the puzzle of the Second Task himself.

He flipped back to the lid to his satchel and pulled out the clue. Manticore venom had eaten away most of the cover, so Rose had conjured thick purple bands to strap the pages together. At one point in his life, this pathetic mass of wilted parchment had been a book.

An enchanted book? Curiously, Albus poked it with his wand. The book did not, as he had hoped, get up and tap-dance or start singing, or even talk to him. It merely sat there. Though it looked innocuous, Albus remembered clearly that his mum had forever distrusted most magical books. She had sat him and James down and warned him against enchanted items. 'Don't write in books that right back,' she'd warned them. 'If you can't see its brain, don't trust it.'

Even though he hadn't experienced a lot in his eleven years, Albus couldn't help but agree with that assessment. After all, he had yet to see the Goblet of Fire's brain, and it was clearly trying to kill him.

Maybe he had to do something specific to get the book to respond. Albus frowned. What did he do to get people to respond? If it was Lily, he'd pull her hair. With Rose, he'd just poke her or clear her throat. And with James, he'd likely hit him on the shoulder and take off running. That usually got James's attention—at least long enough for a wrestling match. With Mum and Dad, he just had to be louder than the others.

So I have to provoke everybody I know to get their attention, Albus realized, smiling slightly. He shrugged to himself. The book was already damaged enough—why not try something else? He ripped out a corner of a page.

The book lay still.

Bloody useless thing, Albus decided, instinctively glancing around to make sure his mother had not appeared and spontaneously gained the ability to hear his thoughts. What use was a book with no writing, and no way of giving him the clue? He rubbed the parchment bit between his fingers as he scowled. Weak, winter sunlight from the window over his shoulder caught the movement and danced it back to him in a shadow. With a jolt, Albus sat up.

"It's a Muggle spy kit," he remembered his dad telling his grandfather, just the Christmas before. "Muggle children love them—it's the full kit, too, with binoculars that let you see at night, a laser pointer, an invisible ink kit—"

"Invisible ink?" Arthur Weasley had pushed at his reading glasses excitedly. "They know invisibility spells?"

"Er, not quite." Harry Potter adjusted his own glasses, chuckling. "It's special chemicals—"

"Chemicals?"

"A bit like potions. Just more, er, scientific."

Invisible ink, Albus thought now, scrambling to get a parchment and a quill to write this idea down before it could fade. Certainly that was a Muggle thing that had fascinated his grandfather so much, but Arthur had talked about invisibility spells that could be put on regular ink. And maybe there was a potion to reveal hidden writing, something they could try on—

With a moue of dismay, Albus sighed. They'd have to use it on James's book, he decided, looking at the wreckage of his own. Very likely little could be read, even if they used the right potion to reveal the words. And he'd wanted so badly to solve the clue before James or even Victoire could. He would have to enlist his brother's help.

Still, he didn't let the thought distract him from leaping up and hurrying to the potions catalogue in the corner. A giant, dusty tome sat in the corner, currently open to the 'S' section. In it, Albus knew every potion in the library would be referenced by book title and page. Very few students actually used it, however, because doing so required knowing the actual name of the desired potion—or a very large amount of luck. Albus just had to hope that the Potter luck was running strong. Hardly daring to hope, he turned to the 'I' section and began to run his finger down the page.

Five minutes later, ink still wet on his note-parchment, he tore out of the library, startling both himself and the Fat Friar when he ran full-tilt through the jovial ghost. Calling a hurried "Sorry!" over his shoulder, he sped up. He leapt down the staircases three and four steps at a time, ignoring his mother's voice in his head, warning him to slow down before he plummeted to his death. And he took off down the Transfiguration corridor, barreling into his target at full speed. Stone walls all around them practically shook from the impact.

"Ow!" Rose glared at him from the ground. "Albus! What'd you do that for? Watch where you're bloody well going, will you?"

"Sorry—" Excited enough to hop from foot to foot, Albus reached down and hauled her to her feet, patting the sleeves of her robes sheepishly. "Didn't see you, Rose, Ev—glad I found you, though—you'll never believe what I got—"

"Quinlan wants to see you," Evan interrupted before Albus could announce his news. The other first year had jumped back at seeing Albus hurtling down the corridor; now he inched closer, wary of Rose's temper.

"What?"

"Said we needed to find you straight off. James just went up to talk to him, but now he needs to talk to you, too. So I don't reckon it's about blowing your cauldron up in Potions—"

"Even if it was Malfoy's fault," Rose muttered, her annoyance finding a new source.

Albus, remembering the incident in question—and the very bright orange, very gooey aftermath—winced. His mother would be receiving the owl any minute that he needed a new cauldron. And that he'd managed to paint the potions dungeon a new color entirely. He didn't figure it to be quite Howler-worthy, as his parents could afford more cauldrons, but you never knew with Ginny Potter's temper. She might, he knew, try to send a bright pink cauldron to punish him. And if Albus had to spend the rest of the year making potions in a bright pink cauldron, he was definitely getting Malfoy back for the firecracker that had caused the whole mess.

Despite the fact that it had been hilarious, and Albus wished he'd thought of it first.

"Quinlan didn't say what he wanted? Not even a hint?" he asked now.

"It's about the Tournament, I suppose," Rose ventured when Evan only shrugged. "He made it sound important."

Something heavy and ungainly settled in Albus's stomach. "Well, I'd best see what he wants. Don't want to be late—"

"Wait." Rose grabbed his sleeve to hold him in place. "What'd you want to tell us?"

"Huh?"

"Al, you came running out here like every Bludger in Scotland was chasing you," Rose pointed out, a bit impatiently. She was seconds away from stomping her foot. "You said you had something to show us? Something you found?"

"Oh! Right." Albus looked down at his hands, but he'd dropped the parchment during the collision with Rose. Hurriedly, he bent and snatched it up, his rucksack swinging to his elbow in his haste and nearly knocking him over. He thrust the parchment at his cousin and his best friend, hoping it wasn't too smudged. "Look at that! I found that in the Potions Index. First try!"

Rose frowned at the ink, not quite dry and smeared a bit. "Is this for class? Did I miss an assignment?"

"No—" Trust Rose to assume he'd found homework she hadn't, even though Albus was only a mildly attentive student at best.

"An ink revealing potion?" Evan asked, reading over Rose's shoulder. "What for?"

"For this!" Albus yanked the clue from his rucksack and waggled it.

Rose's face cleared in understanding first. "Oh," she realized. "You think somebody's written instructions in it? In invisible ink?"

"Like the spy kit my dad got Grandda for Christmas," Albus confirmed. "I figured the surest way to find out would be a potion. And that potion seems to be all-purpose, you know, for all sorts of useful revealing to be done."

But Evan, not Rose, frowned. "How'd they check it for mistakes? The ink, I mean? I always mess up with quills—they'd have to be pretty confident that they were spelling everything right, or they'd look ridiculous—"

"Evan. Stay focused." But Rose was grinning as she shook her head, reading the potions ingredients that Albus had compiled hurriedly. "Looks pretty complicated. At least fourth and fifth year level." She grinned wider. "I say we try it."

Evan took the mangled book from Albus and inspected one of the pages—the one Albus had torn earlier. "Doesn't look like it has any indents in it. You know, you press hard enough with the quill, and the paper has ridges, and whatnot. I don't see any."

"You could—" Rose, about to explain how that might be possible, stopped abruptly and turned pointedly toward Albus. "What're you still doing here?"

"It's my clue, isn't it?" Albus asked indignantly.

"Yes, but you're due in Headmaster Quinlan's office. Hurry—we'll look over this, and figure out if we can do it in time, and you go see what Qu—what the headmaster wants." Her nose already bent close over the parchment to read Albus's spiky handwriting, Rose waved him away as though he were an afterthought. Albus, remembering all the times he had taken second place to a book in his cousin's life, was only slightly disgruntled as he walked away, calling a farewell to Evan over his shoulder. Once he was out of sight of his friends, he took off running. Though he dreaded whatever it was that Quinlan had to say—the man had never delivered good news to Albus, the first year decided—he wanted to get it over with, so that he could talk to Rose and Evan about the potion.

Sometimes it helped to have an overly curious big brother. James Potter had scored a few detentions as a first year—not that many, Albus had always felt, though his parents certainly thought otherwise. James just had a penchant for being caught at his explorations of Hogwarts, which Albus didn't view as a bad thing. It was actually a great help—James had given Albus and Evan a tour of the entire school in the first week, eager to show off his favorite haunts. And to warn Albus away from them, though Albus figured he didn't mean it. James was mostly talk.

One of the places he'd pointed out had been the headmaster's office. Even James's wanderings hadn't merited him a visit there, so he could only just point to the gargoyle Harry Potter had told his sons about. Both boys had theorized that something very important must lie beyond that wall to warrant such a guard. They'd had quite the time coming up with ideas—a lost school of Hinkypunks, the Minister of Magic's prized knickers collection, even the lost treasure of the temple of Ramses, a story Uncle Bill had told the boys only wizards knew. Though he'd had a fantastic dreaming up suggestions, each more outlandish than the last, Albus found now that he didn't really want to know what was beyond the gargoyle.

He stared into the creature's ugly, gnarled face. It stared lifelessly back. Like Gryffindor Tower, the door required some sort of password, though Evan and Rose hadn't mentioned any.

"Er," Albus finally ventured, clearing his throat. "I'm here to see Quin—Headmaster Quinlan?"

The gargoyle didn't move.

"I'm Albus Potter? He's expecting—oh."

The gargoyle's stone features pounced to life, startling Albus so that he stumbled back. He stared as the creature leapt aside, a gaping hole appearing in the wall behind it. Stairs, lit by the golden flame of torches, spiraled into view. Curious and cautious—and eyeing the gargoyle warily, as though it might change its mind—Albus stepped inside and onto one of the steps. It carried him up and away from the hallway; he heard the wall close up behind him, and wondered if the gargoyle had taken up its post again. Probably.

The staircase wound up to a stately wooden door, polished from centuries of use. Hesitantly, Albus rapped his knuckles against the wood.

"Come in!"

With only the slightest hesitation—a betrayal to the fact that the Sorting Hat had placed him in Gryffindor—Albus twisted the knob and stuck his head into the room. He lowered his eyebrows, confused to see James sitting at a desk opposite the headmaster. Quinlan sat—lounged, really—on a huge wooden chair behind a sprawling desk. Everything atop it was divided into neat sections. Parchments were pristinely rolled to sit beside their fellows, quills lined up with military precision, perfectly fluffed and never daring to shed on the polished wood. Albus, who had never seen a properly clean desk in his life, nearly stared.

"Ah. The other Mr. Potter. I see Mr. Newcastle and Miss Weasley were able to locate you promptly." The headmaster's eyes, gray and just a bit distant, drifted after he'd given Albus a quick once-over. Albus hurriedly straightened the robes he'd rumpled during his collision with Rose. "Please, please, have a seat. Your brother and I were just having tea. Would you care for a cup?"

"Er, certainly, sir. Thank you."

Quinlan just waved his wand, and a cup floated over to Albus, already full of steaming tea. "How do you take it?"

"This is good, thanks." Mindful that he didn't spill, Albus edged into the seat beside James. He glanced at his brother out of the corner of his eye and nearly did a double-take. James's fists were clenched, and he was leaning forward slightly, like their father always did when he was furious and trying to hide it. One of James's shoes tapped restlessly against the tiles; the arm nearest Albus twitched in harmony. Albus's stomach sank even further.

"I see you've applied to go home for the holidays," Quinlan began without preamble. "I'm afraid that I can't grant that application."

Albus's brows knitted together. Had he done something wrong. "Sir?"

"I know you boys wish to see your parents and…you have a sister, am I correct?"

Since James seemed too angry to speak, Albus nodded for the both of them. "Lily. She's nine."

"A lovely name."

"It was our grandmother's." Albus took a sip of tea, as though he were sitting on some fancy parlor instead of being told bad news by his headmaster. His thoughts were whirling, mostly from confusion. "Why can't we go home, sir?" A horrible thought had him nearly fumbling the tea cup. "It's not the Yule Ball, is it?"

"We have to go," James muttered, breaking his silence. Albus watched his knuckles flex. "Because we're Champions. We have to open the ball."

"Open the ball?" Albus looked from his brother to his headmaster.

"Traditionally, Champions are required to lead the first dance," Quinlan explained. "It's been that way since the Tri-Wizard Tournament was first initiated to promote international wizarding relations. Even with your special circumstances—"

Even as he thought longingly of Christmastime at the Burrow, where the family could hardly all fit together—they never gave up trying, though—Albus scowled. "Dad did it, right?" he asked James, trying to remember if Neville had mentioned anything in particular. He'd talked about the Yule Ball, but Albus didn't remember anything about his dad opening the ball with the other Champions.

"Yeah," James told him before Quinlan could. The elder Potter shot a short resentful look across the desk, at the man who lounged on the other side. "Doesn't mean I want to, though. It gets worse."

"What?" He was going to miss Gran Molly's special Christmas feast. What could be worse than that? "How?"

"Dancing lessons."

"What?"

Quinlan lifted an eyebrow at James, tacitly informing him that the headmaster had reached his limit with insolence. James just shrugged and flopped back, staring at his shoes. Quinlan's frown deepened. "Yes, Mr. Potter," he answered Albus, instead of scold James. "You and Mr. Pot—your brother will be required to attend dancing lessons with your head of house this Saturday and next, so that you may represent both Gryffindor House and Hogwarts School in a properly respectful way. You will both need to attain escorts for the Yule Ball, or at least the opening dance."

Albus's stomach, already plummeting, hit some point between his ankles.

Quinlan, however, hadn't finished. "Did either of you bring appropriate dress robes this year?'

"No," James bit off. When he caught Quinlan's reproachful look, he added, "Sir."

"You'll need to write home to your parents and explain the situation, and your needs. I'll arrange it with your father to have you visit Hogsmeade so that you may obtain suitable robes."

Albus sucked in a deep breath. "There's really no way we can get out of this, is there? No magical loophole?"

"I am afraid not, Mr. Potter." Quinlan glanced at the wall above Albus's head, his gaze briefly unfocused. In that moment of distraction, Albus felt his own gaze wander. He sucked in a surprised breath when his eyes landed on the Goblet of Fire, its rim smoking lightly. This was the object, he thought in a daze, that had nearly brought him and James death by manticore. It was smaller than he remembered, just the size of a normal goblet. Every few seconds, it gave a gentle, silent burp of smoke.

Albus shifted his gaze to his brother while he took a sip of tea. But James was staring at his shoes still. Carefully, Albus peeked at the headmaster from under his fringe and nudged his brother. When James frowned at him, questioning, Albus nodded ever so slightly at the goblet. James's frown deepened.

Quinlan might have kept them for two or twenty minutes longer, but neither boy paid much attention, as focused as they were on the Goblet. They stood, nodding politely, when dismissed, and moved to the door. Albus sneaked only one more glance over his shoulder at the Goblet before the door closed behind him. The Potters spiraled down the stairs. Neither spoke, shrouded as they were in their own thoughts, until the wall at the base of the stairs opened for them. Once Albus heard the rustle of stone paws on tile as the gargoyle sprang back into position, he turned to his brother.

"I though they'd have sent the Goblet back to the Ministry by now."

"Nah," James decided. "They still want to put test spells on it. Find out why it picked us."

"Maybe it's just bad luck we got picked."

James shook his head, thoughtfully. "Maybe." He didn't say anything else, so the brothers walked along silently, until James commented, "I forgot how small it was. I mean, if you think about it, it's just a goblet. Like Dad's hat, when he used to pull names out of it so that the Quidditch teams would be fair."

Albus nodded. "But unlike Dad's hat," he reasoned, "it's not random."

"It's not?"

"Well, it picked us. Two Potters. When it picked Dad in his fourth year, when he was too young to be a Champion."

"It's got something in for the Potters," James mused. The concept wasn't unfamiliar; both boys remembered outings where their parents had acted strangely, or had pulled them away suddenly, as though from danger. With their dad famous for having felled Voldemort, and their mum an ex-Quidditch player with disappointed fans, they'd had more than their share of scares. Now James frowned. "Has anybody tried to talk to it?"

"What?"

"I mean, I know they're trying spells on it and whatnot, and that's all fine, but has anybody tried to actually talk to it and figure out who put our names in?"

"It doesn't have a mouth."

"You could, you know, write to it."

Albus stared at his older brother. "You want to owl the Goblet of Fire?"

"No, not send it an owl." James rolled his eyes, as though Albus were being an idiot. "Just drop a letter—doesn't even have to be a full one, really—into it. Say something like, 'Hey, who put our names in? Did you get a good look at his face?' Something like that."

"The Goblet doesn't have a mouth," Albus repeated. "Or eyes."

"It doesn't need to, does it? It spits out the names of the Champions just fine, which means it's not actually burning the parchment people put into it." James shrugged. "So maybe it'll have a way to answer direct questions."

Albus goggled at his brother as they rounded the corner leading to Gryffindor Tower. "So you want to ask Quinlan permission to put a letter into the Goblet of Fire," he surmised, wondering.

James frowned back. "When you put it that way, it sounds a bit mad, doesn't it?" He turned to the Fat Lady. "Bless you."

"Why, thank you." With a giggle and a girlish wave at the boys, the portrait swung forward. James scrambled through first, Albus close on his heels. Most of the students were out, still enjoying their snowball fights or watching Quidditch practice, so the Common Room was mostly empty. And for once, the good seats in front of the fire weren't taken. In perfect accord, the brothers collapsed into adjacent armchairs.

"I don't think we should ask permission," James finally decided, staring into the flames. "The adults might say no, and then they would know what we were up to, eh? And I feel like we need to try this, putting the letter into the goblet. It's better, after all, to ask forgiveness than permission, eh?"

"Words to live by," Albus decided after a minute. "So if we're not going to ask permission, how are we going to get to the Goblet? In case you haven't noticed, it's in the headmaster's office, and we're not exactly constant visitors there, now, are we?"

James frowned. "True." He paused, his frown turning oddly thoughtful. Albus, who had seen his older brother rush into more hey-go-mad situations than anybody he knew, was oddly frightened.

His fear only increased when James turned that thoughtful look on him. "Well, that's settled."

"What's settled?"

"I won't be going anywhere near the Goblet," James decided. "You will. You're going to get the Goblet to talk to you."

Albus stared at his elder brother as though he had grown a spare head—or three. "What?"

"The teachers know me better," James informed him. "They've had me longer, they know my motivations, and whatnot. I have a reason to do the things I do, and they know that. If I do something that ends me up in the headmaster's office, they're going to know I have ulterior motives. You, however, might as well be a blank slate."

"But—but—" Albus thought about the sort of things that might warrant a trip into the headmaster's office. And he didn't like a single one of them. Or the resulting Howlers, come to think of it. "But—Mum and Dad—"

"Will get over it," James decided firmly. He nodded once, as though that decided everything, as though Albus wasn't gaping at him, open-mouthed. "Good to have a plan. See you later, Al."

And before Albus could squawk out another protest, James strode off toward the stairs, muttering about finding a date for the Yule Ball, and how real men didn't need dancing lessons.


By the time Rose and Evan found their way back to Gryffindor Tower, Rose bubbling over with ideas on completing what she called "their potion," rather than just Albus's, Albus had managed to shove his brother's latest hare-brained scheme from his mind. Mostly.

Still, he looked a bit glassy-eyed when his friends spilled into the Common Room. "What's up with you?" Evan asked immediately, throwing himself in the armchair James had abandoned fire with a long, contented sigh.

Albus shook his head. He'd crawled down in front of the fire and lay on his back, looking up at his friends in the armchairs. "It's been the strangest afternoon."

"Stranger than outsmarting a manticore?"

"Almost," Albus stressed, "outsmarting a manticore. And yes." Still reeling a bit over it, he filled his friends in on the conversation with James, and seeing the Goblet in Headmaster Quinlan's office. "And on top of that," he finished, resting his palm against his forehead, "I have to find a date for the Yule Ball."

Rose frowned. "They've made it a special policy for you and James to attend, haven't they? Since you're Champions?"

Albus nodded.

Evan muttered his opinion of that. Rose snickered at his language, rather than chastising him like her mother might. "He's right," she decided. "Who're you going to ask? You'd better hurry—all the others have a head-start on you and James, after all."

"Yeah, they've also got the advantage of being older." Albus rolled his eyes. "And, you know, interested in stuff like this." It quite depressed him to be forced into the dating world at eleven, when his cousins, much older and wiser, were having so much trouble with it as young as fifteen. He'd noticed just earlier that day that both Lexy and Dim looked a bit uncomfortable with the idea of a Yule Ball. Lexy, probably because she'd turned down Llewellyn and everybody was afraid to come near her or face the huge Slytherin's wrath. And Dim because Marisa Marpoles wasn't returning the calf's eyes he constantly made at her.

Albus didn't pretend to understand.

He tilted his head back to look at the fire, groaning. "Don't suppose you'd go with me, Rose?"

But Rose shook her head. "I'm going home, Al. Without me there, Hugo and Dad would drive Mum spare with the decorating." She looked a bit like she might regret passing up an opportunity to attend one of the most famous wizard balls in the world. But the thought of Aunt Hermione left alone with her mischievous husband and son was clearly stronger. Or at least more compelling, Albus had to admit.

He kicked idly at the leg of the arm chair Evan had collapsed into.

"Before you ask," Evan said, "I'm not interested in blokes." He crossed his eyes and stuck his tongue out at Albus.

Albus returned the face. "I wasn't going to ask. I'm not interested in blokes either."

"Good. Glad we got that cleared up, then." Evan used the tip of his wand to scratch his scalp just above his widow's peak, ignoring the blue sparks it kicked up at the motion. "You know, you should just check the lists, see if there are any first years staying. Or see if there's somebody willing to stay over the break just to attend this fancy shindig."

Albus nodded. "Good idea."

"So the Walking Dictionary over here located your potion and did some more research," Evan announced, jerking a thumb at Rose. She stuck her tongue out at him, but he hadn't finished. "She reckons it'll take us a couple of weeks to make."

"So we should start after Christmas? And try revealing spells in the meantime?" Albus wondered aloud.

Rose nodded. "I'll need to talk to Professor Honeywell. Since it's for the tournament, she might object to Evan and me helping you—"

"I doubt that." Albus, struck by a sudden idea, grinned. "'Sides, she's easy to get around. We can just ask Neville, right?"

"Devious," Evan decided. "I like it."

"So we'll make the potion then, and include James so that we can use a page from his book, too." Rose glanced around. "Where is James, anyway? He wasn't at Quidditch practice, obviously, because Professor Quinlan wanted to see him, but where's he now? He's usually taking a nap in one of these chairs, or hanging out with the hoodlums—"

Albus shrugged. "He went upstairs. I think the plan to corrupt me and get me in to talk to the Goblet wore him out."

Rose frowned a bit. "You know, I got a letter from Dad the other day—he says he's a bit disappointed that we haven't had at least four detentions yet. He'd think it's a good thing that James is trying to corrupt you."

"My mum won't, and she's scarier than your dad."

"True."


Most boys waited until thirteen or fourteen to discover just how hard it was to dredge up dates. Albus, being a naturally precocious child, didn't: he jumped head-first into this painful rite of passage at eleven years old, and emerged, he was certainly, entirely changed for the experience.

"Kill me," he rasped to his cousin and his best friend, plopping into one of the overstuffed armchairs in Gryffindor House on Saturday night.

Evan looked up from the miniature Quidditch board game he'd been playing with Rose (who'd taken, as usual, an unbeatable combination of Puddlemere United's Keeper, the entire offensive line from the Ballycastle Bats, and the rest from other assorted teams; Evan's generic Holyhead Harpies couldn't hope to stand up to such an awesome array of power). "What's that?" he asked. "Kill you? What for? Dancing lessons that terrible?"

In his recent humiliation, Albus had quite forgotten about the dancing lessons. Thinking of them now just made him turn white and moan.

"Must've been," Rose observed, looking from her cousin to their friend. On the tiny board, Oliver Wood made an impressive catch that went mostly unnoticed. "What happened, Al? McGonagall try to dance with you? Dad says she's not so bad, you know, if you catch her at the right moments."

Albus groaned. "No, no, I didn't have to dance with McGonagall." James had, though. Victoire, as Head Girl and Prefect, had shown up to assist the Potter boys in their dancing quests. She had partnered Albus, and had only laughed when he'd tromped all over her toes. "And I don't want to think any more about dancing lessons. They're bad enough."

"What's got you in this state, then?"

On the board, the miniature Oliver Wood berated his Beaters. The Holyhead Harpies, a conspicuous redhead among them, snickered.

"I have asked every bloody first year girl to go with me to the Yule Ball," Albus announced.

To his horror, his two best friends did not look affronted or sympathetic over the news. In fact, Evan snickered. "Even Lacey Muldoon?"

"The Slytherin?" Rose looked a bit like she wanted to laugh, too, but she caught a look at Albus's thunderous expression and wisely refrained.

"Even her," Albus muttered.

"And?" Rose prodded his knee, her eyebrows high.

"And every bloody first year but me seems to be going home." Albus practically snarled it. Feeling overdramatic and, well, eleven, he hurled himself against the back of the chair and prepared to indulge himself in a fine sulk. "You don't know how many times I've heard, 'Well, gee, that's nice of you, Al, but I've plans.' One of the Slytherins—not Lacey—laughed at me. Three of the Ravenclaws giggled as I walked away. I think they were laughing at my hair."

"What?" Now indignant on her cousin's behalf, Rose nearly leapt to her feet to go teach the Ravenclaws a lesson. "It's not your fault that it sticks up in the back! It's genetics!"

"I think they were laughing at the fact that it's red," Evan observed, squinting up at his best friend.

"That's even worse," Rose decided, a mutinous set to her face. Albus decided then and there that he didn't want to be a Ravenclaw in their next Charms class—it looked as though Rose might intentionally miss with the next potentially nasty spell. "So what are you going to do? If none of the first years will go with you?"

"Start with the second years, I expect." A flush started at the base of his neck at the thought of asking, as his dad might put it, 'an older woman' to the ball, but Albus stared determinedly into the fire. "Look a bit like an idiot dancing by myself, wouldn't I?"

"I'm sure you'll find somebody." Rose hunkered down over the Quidditch game again, frowning when she saw that the score had altered in her distraction. She waved her wand impatiently, freezing the entire game.

"Hey! Jones was about to score!"

The famous Gwenog Jones was indeed frozen, mid-throw.

Rose shrugged. "She'll just have to wait a minute, I suppose. You should ask Erika Jorgenssen, Al, to the ball."

Albus scrunched up his nose. "Which one's she?"

"Real pretty. Second year. Blonde." Rose craned her neck to get a better look around the common room. "Her relatives always go abroad—I heard the second years talking about it—so she usually stays behind. She might like to go with you, just to get a chance to go to the ball."

"Sure." Since he'd already humiliated himself with the people in all of his classes, why not go up a year? Albus shrugged. "Just point her out tomorrow at breakfast."

"Oh, she's right over there." Rose waved a freckled hand at a young woman leaning over some sort of magazine on the far opposite side of the common room. Albus studied her as furtively as he could, blushing a bit. He couldn't tell very well, but she did look pretty, as Rose had claimed. He took a deep breath and rose.

"Good luck," Evan told him.

"Thanks. I might need it."

It took forever to walk across the common room; every step seemed to last a minor eternity from the time his foot left the floor until it fell again. Determined, Albus slogged on, past a group of frantically revising seventh years, dodging the screaming ball the fourth years seemed to adore. He felt his friends' eyes watching him, and squared his shoulders.

At the precise moment he reached Erika, a commotion on the stairs made him look over. Every second year boy piled into the common room, shouting and gathering around James. They were pounding him on the back, slapping his shoulders and tousling his hair as though he were about to go represent Gryffindor House in Quidditch. He stumbled away from them, a bit flushed, and looked around the common room, searching for something.

"Excuse me?"

Albus was jolted back to the present to find an extraordinarily pretty girl watching him, confused. Oh, right, he remembered. He'd come over to this side of the room to ask Erika Jorgenssen to the ball.

Only now that he was standing right in front of her, his tongue seemed to have curled up faster than a shrivelfig.

"Um…"

"Did you need something?" Erika blinked guilelessly blue eyes at him; all intelligence seemed to drain from Albus like through a sieve.

"Er—"

James spared Albus from having to answer by popping up unannounced at his elbow. He flicked an almost disdainful glance over his younger brother and merely said, "Shoo."

Faced with the frightening thought of asking an older woman on a date, Albus was almost relieved as he fled.

"What happened?" Rose demanded immediately once Albus had flung himself into the safety of the armchair. "Did she say yes? Did you even ask her?"

Albus, about to inform his friends that he had chickened out, was spared even that. Evan craned his neck to get a good look across the common room. "Looks like he got beat out," he decided, nodding. "By his own brother, at that."

"What?" Surprised, Albus twisted to look. It hadn't even occurred to him to ask what James had been doing; he'd just taken the opportunity to run without thinking it through. But now James was hurrying away from Erika, back to his friends. He was flushed a bright red, a gift of his Weasley heritage. And Erika Jorgenssen, though she was staring at her magazine again, blushed exactly the same shade. Realization dawned. "Oh."

"He looks pretty pleased with himself," Rose observed, watching James get his back slapped and his hair tousled yet again. "Pride of the second years, that's our James Potter."

Evan turned his grin back to Albus, obviously deciding to focus on Albus rather than on the Quidditch game. It was understandable; Rose's lineup was beating his by a tidy five hundred points. "Don't worry, Al," Evan told him. "I'm sure we'll find you a date in time."

"Even if we have to ask every Slytherin in the school," Rose decided, and all three pulled a face at that prospect.

A/N the Second: Next chapter - Albus finds a date. Care to guess who? (No, it's not Rose)